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Cobby · 02-26-2021, 08:40 PM

What I always like to do is to create an alternate fictional universe that follows along with the RL baseball history.

My experience is that the game does just fine from about 1945 on and I get just about the right amount of exceptional players. But prior to that everything is a little flat. Using the standard player creation file (era_modifers.txt), I never seem to get anywhere close to the equivalent of a Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth.

I think the player creation part of the game is calibrated to work best in the modern era. It's a tricky thing to manage the change in eras, especially that transition between the dead ball and live ball era.. To get someone like Ty Cobb hitting close to .400 in the deadball era when the league average was around .240 or so, then you need someone with a contact rating way higher than the average for the league. But, the danger is: if you don't ramp up the league average contact rating fast when the liveball era, hits your ersatz Cobb could end up hitting over .500 when the league average rises to near .300.

So what I've been doing lately is: First, I use a custom era_modifiers.txt file. The custom file keeps contact and power rating very low during the deadball era, then ramps up contact very quickly going into the live ball era. Power ramps up also but a little bit later so there can be a possibility of a Ruthian figure in the early live ball era.

Then I sprinkle in a few exceptional players periodically. I don't like to do this directly since I don't want to know who they are. What I do is to use Scouting Discoveries. Since it's the early days of baseball, I set scouting discoveries to not be international necessarily, but to match the rest of the league. Then I find a period when these are the only players being created (after the draft pool has been announced and before any year-end free agents are created). Then for that period of time (usually May - July in my league) I temporarily increase the player creation modifiers. During this period, there is much higher than normally chance of an exceptional player being created as a scouting discovery. The good thing is that I have no idea who they are or what teams they go to. I do this roughly once every 10 game years (definitely don't want to do much more often than that or your exceptional players will not be so exceptional any more)

It's worked quite well so far in my league (currently in 1936). I like the uncertainty of it - all I ask is a chance of getting these exceptional players.

So far my league is comparing pretty well with real life history. I didn't get a Babe Ruth-like player at first, but I did get a guy that's looks like he might challenge the Babe, but he started a little bit later. I had one guy that was giving Ty Cobb a run for his money for awhile, but then he had injury trouble and ended up with a short but memorable career.

You just have to experiment with it. There's always a chance that you'll get someone so super-duper that it messes up the believability . I tend to err on the conservative side.

02-26-2021, 08:40 PM	#10
Cobby Minors (Triple A) Join Date: May 2016 Posts: 252	What I always like to do is to create an alternate fictional universe that follows along with the RL baseball history. My experience is that the game does just fine from about 1945 on and I get just about the right amount of exceptional players. But prior to that everything is a little flat. Using the standard player creation file (era_modifers.txt), I never seem to get anywhere close to the equivalent of a Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth. I think the player creation part of the game is calibrated to work best in the modern era. It's a tricky thing to manage the change in eras, especially that transition between the dead ball and live ball era.. To get someone like Ty Cobb hitting close to .400 in the deadball era when the league average was around .240 or so, then you need someone with a contact rating way higher than the average for the league. But, the danger is: if you don't ramp up the league average contact rating fast when the liveball era, hits your ersatz Cobb could end up hitting over .500 when the league average rises to near .300. So what I've been doing lately is: First, I use a custom era_modifiers.txt file. The custom file keeps contact and power rating very low during the deadball era, then ramps up contact very quickly going into the live ball era. Power ramps up also but a little bit later so there can be a possibility of a Ruthian figure in the early live ball era. Then I sprinkle in a few exceptional players periodically. I don't like to do this directly since I don't want to know who they are. What I do is to use Scouting Discoveries. Since it's the early days of baseball, I set scouting discoveries to not be international necessarily, but to match the rest of the league. Then I find a period when these are the only players being created (after the draft pool has been announced and before any year-end free agents are created). Then for that period of time (usually May - July in my league) I temporarily increase the player creation modifiers. During this period, there is much higher than normally chance of an exceptional player being created as a scouting discovery. The good thing is that I have no idea who they are or what teams they go to. I do this roughly once every 10 game years (definitely don't want to do much more often than that or your exceptional players will not be so exceptional any more) It's worked quite well so far in my league (currently in 1936). I like the uncertainty of it - all I ask is a chance of getting these exceptional players. So far my league is comparing pretty well with real life history. I didn't get a Babe Ruth-like player at first, but I did get a guy that's looks like he might challenge the Babe, but he started a little bit later. I had one guy that was giving Ty Cobb a run for his money for awhile, but then he had injury trouble and ended up with a short but memorable career. You just have to experiment with it. There's always a chance that you'll get someone so super-duper that it messes up the believability . I tend to err on the conservative side.